And Then…I Got Age Shamed

For as long as I can remember, being younger than everyone else was my trump card. No matter what happened, I still had plenty of time to figure it all out. I was just a kid! But then, last weekend, on a girls' trip to Montauk, my fading youth was called into question. FML.

For a large part of my life, I was the youngest person everywhere I went. Having skipped the first grade—don't act like you're not impressed—I was the last person to get her period, her license, and the legal go-ahead to imbibe alcohol. I began high school at age 13, college at 17, and was a fresh 21 when I started my first big girl job. For the next three years, as I held down a string of jobs in celebrity and fashion public relations, my bosses all gave me the same superlative: "You're such a baby," they'd squeal with a mixture of disbelief and envy. And though I didn't love my job, I reveled in the idea that I was some kind of wunderkind—the sole William Miller in a sea of Lester Bangses.

But then, at 24, I realized I was in the wrong industry. I had always wanted to work at a magazine; I just didn't know exactly how to do that. So, three years after graduating from college, I began to intern again (I'd previously logged stints at two other national publications), here at ELLE. For the first time in my life, I was the "old intern." I became accustomed to explaining to my supervisors, all of whom were my age, that I wanted to learn the industry from the "ground up." But the God's honest truth is that I had little interest in paying my dues. I just wanted a job commensurate with my age, something I had somehow confused with experience.

After a year of interning and freelance assisting, I finally landed my first magazine job—well, sort of. I was hired to support an editor who oversaw the digital arms of several popular magazines at a competing publishing house. And while my responsibilities were largely of the administrative variety, I began writing pithy one-liners for celebrity photos. I really started to flex my creative muscles on that job, so much so that I captioned an image of Kiefer Sutherland hailing a cab while clutching several packs of smokes, "Death and Taxis." Clever, my boss said, but inappropriate.

I spent the next two years learning how to synthesize the who/what/where of an image into digestible quips, eventually moving on to the fashion news desk, where I wrote five to six daily news posts on celebrity fashion. By the time I left that job to return to ELLE, I was 27 years old. I had been offered what many people in the industry would consider an entry-level gig assisting the entertainment director. I finagled a small title change to what I felt more accurately reflected my experience, but I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I had been lapped by my friends, all of whom had long since graduated from jobs with the word "assistant" in the title.

Last December, I got what many would qualify as my "big break." ELLE's editor-in-chief and the site director of ELLE.com conferred that I might be a good fit for a role as a web editor at ELLE.com. And for the first time in a long time, I felt as if my age didn't betray the seriousness of the gig. (If you're counting, that would put me at a seasoned 29.) But all of my back-on-track self esteem was challenged last weekend.

On a trip to Montauk, my friend and I noticed what we thought was, perhaps, the best appropriation of natural resources we'd ever seen: A group of young guys had dug out a beer pong table so that players, standing in bunkers, were protected from arc-interfering winds. And because of how adorable we looked—or perhaps because our eyes were bugging out of heads like a pair of cartoon cats—we were quickly invited to play. Man, we felt cool sauntering into the dugout, clad in nothing but our bikinis. And as we expertly filled our Solo cups with beer, our competitors asked our names and ages. "I'm 29, and she's thirty," I boasted, gleaning a familiar sense of pride from being younger than my company. The entire table—and by this time, we were surrounded by 20 or so spectators—burst out laughing. "Are you serious??" the built one with the mustache asked with an incredulous smile. And then a little girl, who I presume was his little sister, spilled the beans: "They are seventeen!" she said while stifling giggles. I nearly spit out my beer.

Seventeen?!?! All of a sudden, the entire operation—sauntering up to a team of strange boys, swigging from a pony-neck Corona that was undoubtedly pilfered from parents; shouting "raindrops" every time I tossed out a pitiful dagger shot—felt dreadfully pathetic. And then the little girl piped up again, "But you look, like, really good for thirty." I should have been flattered, but every fiber in my being wanted to correct her by saying, "I'm only 29!" But even in the midst of deafening "MILF" chants (I wish I was kidding), I realized how silly of a distinction it really was.

For the record, we lost the game. And honestly, I was pretty relieved to get back to our IPA-sipping, novel-reading compatriots. And as I slathered on some more SPF 60, the ice-cold brews making me feel pleasantly lightheaded, I couldn't help but smile. At 29, it could be a whole lot worse than being known as the adventurous MILF-to-be who finally got the job. It's a pretty good racket for any age, really.